SERMON – PENTECOST XV
September 25, 2011
+In the Name…
“For I have no pleasure in the death of any one, says the Lord God, so turn, and live” (Ezekiel 18:32).
Since the Lord God is the author of giver and life, and since He put Adam and Eve in the Garden to live forever in communion with Him, of course, He has no pleasure in the death of any one.
Death began its “life” (if I can put it that way) in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve rebelled against God and disobeyed Him. They squandered what they had been given, and the creation fell.
Whether we like it or not, we are inheritors of their original sin. We have within us both the capacity for sin, and the capacity by God’s grace to do and be what pleases God. In Baptism, we were made children of God, members of the Church (the Body of Christ) and inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven. But throughout our lives, there is a spiritual war that rages within us (and hopefully less and less so as we strive to be holy, and grow in age, wisdom, and spiritual maturity) between the flesh and the spirit – the battle of whether we’ll walk in obedience upon the path God has laid, or whether we’ll decide what we deem as good and right, what we decide we want to do.
The Parable before us this morning is about this – choices whether to be obedient or not, and choices we make upon reflection of what we’re done.
Father John Bartunek in his book, The Better Part, states:
“Usually, we determine the best course of action by first applying our own personal analysis and standards. Then, if what the Church or our superiors teach happens to be in agreement with our judgment, we accept it. If it doesn’t, we tend to question them rather than ourselves” (p. 249).
Consider also what my beloved seminary professor of philosophical theology, Dr. J.V. Langmead Casserley, wrote in his book, Christian Community (and listen to whom, in particular, he addresses this):
“The greatest danger that confronts the Church, and the Church’s commissioned preachers, as we proclaim the gospel is the possibility that in practice we shall not present the gospel in its integrity to the world, but confuse it with our own prejudices, ideologies, passions, and fears, forging God’s signature so to speak at the foot of the scroll of merely human ideas” (p. 77).
Father Bartunek states the remedy for the clergy and laity:
“The Christian attitude…recognizes the weakness and limits of human nature (and therefore of oneself), and seeks to align its judgment with the assurance of God’s revelation in Christ. It lets the warm and gentle sunlight of faith brighten the shadows cast by the quivering lamplight of natural reason” (p. 249).
In this morning’s Parable taught by our Lord, neither son treated his father with due respect and obedience. The first son’s “I will not” and the second son’s “I go, Sir" (but did not) were not right.
But, the first son redeemed himself by afterward repenting of his disobedience and thus going in obedience to his father’s command. Jesus tells us that was a good thing, because a change of mind and heart ensued in the first son, and he did do (after a time of unwillingness to do) what he was supposed to do.
This teaching, as all of our Lord’s teachings, is instructive and truth-revealing about the human condition. We so often and so quickly go to or stay in the place where we have decided to be and stay, but God is calling us to something else. The Parable reminds us to be on the watch of this type of posture and attitude because if we stay there, we fail to seize what God has put before us for our good, the path He calls us to walk upon.
I can say from experience that I have (upon reflection) done this numerous times because I reacted too quickly to what was before me without spending the time and making the effort to pray it through. Often, what God was calling me to do seemed too strange and foreign, and so greatly against what made sense to me. But, thanks be to God, He either would pour out his mercy upon me, or would hound me in making me restless or unsettled in spirit, or give me signs that I couldn’t miss reading, or put people in my life who got my attention as one of God’s agents.
I am absolutely convinced that God the Holy Spirit is leading us to a new place which is both old and new. He wants to use us to be parts of the fulfillment of His Son’s High-Priestly Prayer – “May they all be one.” He wants us to see that the Church as Jesus established it and is its Head requires a defined Leader and a clear source of authority for its teachings. He wants us to seize these truths because they are evidential of the love of God.
Dr. Peter Kreeft, a convert to Catholicism from the Christian Reformed tradition, writes about this generous love of God, as he addresses the often-misunderstood doctrine of Papal Infallibility.
Listen, please, closely to what he writes:
“Vatican Council I defined what Catholics had always believed: that the pope, like the ecumenical (worldwide) councils, is infallible (preserved by God from error) when defining doctrine or morality for the whole Church. He is not personally infallible, but his office is.
God did not let us wonder and wander in darkness about the most important truths we had to know in order to fulfill our most important task in life, union with him.
"No human lover would allow that if he could help it. Neither did God. Papal Infallibility, like every other Catholic dogma, is properly understood by the primacy of love.
"Infallibility is God’s loving gift in response to our need to persevere in the unity of love and truth – which is what God wants above all because that is what he is: love (I John 4:18) and truth (John 6:14). Without infallibility, uncertainties and schisms are inevitable among us fallen and foolish humans for whom Christ designed the Church” (Catholic Christianity, p. 101).
Now the issue of Infallibility will be topic for our class discussions at some point in the future, but for today, I simply want you to think of how God’s love; and how and what He calls us to something new, so often requires our acceptance of His will by faith. When we fail to heed His call at the first, there is time for a change of mind and heart (as we heard in the Parable today) - if we remain open.
For us in this Fellowship, the mantra is “be open, pray, and learn.” Who knows what new discoveries and new joys can be found in so doing? It is God who knows and who loves us beyond our human understanding.
+In the Name…
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